Numerous exercise devices, assemblies, and routines claim to exercise and develop the gluteus muscles. However, these devices do not allow the user to work the gluteus muscles with specificity and through a wide range of motion. The lack of specificity results in other body structures, such as joints and other muscles, substantially sharing or experiencing a load that would preferably be placed on the gluteus muscles.
For instance, an exercise commonly known as a squat is known to work the gluteus muscles, quadriceps, hamstrings, and lower back, among other body structures. However, at one end of the range of motion of the squat, where a user's hips are positioned rearwardly, the user's knees are bent to a considerable degree and are highly loaded. In this bent and highly loaded position, a user's knees are subject to undesirable stress. The user's gluteus muscles are relatively highly, and therefore desirably, loaded in this position, where the gluteus muscles are generally extended. At the other end of the range of motion, where the user's hips are positioned approximately neutrally, the user's knees are relatively straight, and the user stands relatively upright. At this end of the range of motion, the load on the gluteus muscles is relatively low, which is undesirable for working or exercising the gluteus muscles. Squats are relatively highly technique dependent; they require good technique, which can be difficult or time consuming to develop, to avoid placing undesirable stress on the user's back or knees. Finally, not only do squats load the gluteus muscles highly unevenly across the range of motion exercised, that range of motion is itself limited undesirably. Squats do not extend or position the user's hips substantially forwardly in the sagittal plane, such that the gluteus muscles are adequately flexed.
Most devices, assemblies, and routines suffer the same or similar drawbacks to those exemplified by squats. They frequently do not load the gluteus muscles evenly or adequately across a broad range of motion. They thus only work the gluteus muscles in a limited range of motion relative to the full range of motion that is typically available to a person's hips and gluteus muscles.
Therefore, there exists in the prior art a dearth of apparatuses, assemblies, or routines, that involve a relatively small degree of knee angle change, and that focus load on gluteus muscles, while providing a relatively wide range of motion about the hip joint, in or parallel to the sagittal plane.